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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
*********************
                                                Media Relations
                                                Georgia Institute of Technology
                                                Office of Communications
                                                Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0181
                                                4048942452
                                                FAX 4048539187
NEWS
 
For more information contact:
Toni Lynn Mills
Information Specialist
Georgia Tech Media Relations
404-894-8324
E-mail: toni.mills@vpea.gatech.edu
 
 
 
November 23, 1994
 
 
                Georgia Tech Researchers Unmask the Web User
                ********************************************
 
        ATLANTA -- Preliminary results of a Georgia Tech survey finally lift
the veil on the demographics of the passengers on the "Information
Superhighway."  Using the World-Wide Web (WWW) and technology developed at
Georgia Tech, researchers Jim Pitkow and Mimi Recker now know that the typical
user is a 30-year old educated male from North America who works with
computers.
        The results enable businesses to target their services, as well as
facilitate development of user-friendly information technologies. Wide-spread
networking coupled with the ease of publishing multimedia materials within the
Web will support radical changes in areas such as medicine, education,
business, and entertainment.
        "It will be interesting to see if and how these trends change as the
Web gains in global access and popularity. Contrary to the belief that the
average Web user is young and without much discretionary income, the results
indicate nearly 43% of respondents report their income between $35,000 and
$75,000," explained James Pitkow, the survey originator and researcher at
Georgia Tech's Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center.
        The survey was composed of three question categories: general
background questions, browser usage, and questions for Web information
providers. In addition, the researchers added an experimental category
addressing users' attitudes toward commercial use of the Web and the Internet.
"In just over one month, we received over 18,000 total responses to
the combined surveys. To the best of our knowledge, the number of respondents
and range of questions make this survey the most reliable and comprehensive
characterization of WWW users to date. It will be interesting to see if and
how the user trends shown in our results change as the Web gains in global
access and popularity," explained Pitkow.
        "Technical professionals and university students together comprise
over 53% of the user population, with 40% tapping into the Web one to four
times a day. The most widely used platform is X/UNIX (43%), followed by
PCs (29%) and Macintoshes (19%). 71% of respondents are located in
North America, with California accounting for nearly one seventh of all
respondents," said Recker, a research scientist in Georgia Tech's
College of Computing. "While most users are concerned with security of
sensitive information (82%), the most salient issues are vendor reliability
and information quality (89% and 84% respectively)."
        The universal accessibility of information technologies means that
the user population will be extremely diverse in terms of skills, experiences,
abilities, and backgrounds. As such, a crucial ingredient to the success of
such endeavors is an understanding of its user population. One powerful
method of characterizing the background, usage patterns, and preferences
of users is via surveys.
        The survey, advertised and made available to Web users for 38 days
during October and November 1994, was built on state-of-the-art architecture
developed at Georgia Tech and existing Web technologies, improving the
robustness of the system, the reliability of the data, and the quality of
the human-computer interaction.
        The World-Wide Web is the fastest growing Internet information
resource. These technologies for the first time hold the potential of
bringing the "Age of Information" and the White House's promise of the
National Information Infrastructure (NII) to people of all ages, backgrounds,
and economic status.
 
                                    ###
 
Editor's Note:
The preliminary results are available on WWW in Postscript and HTML via
URL:http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/
 
**Further analyses are forthcoming and will be available at the same site.**
 
 
 
 
 
-- 
MILLS,TONI L. (Information Specialist II, Media Relations) (404) 894-8324
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332-0181 
uucp:	  ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!tm29
Internet: toni.mills@vpea.gatech.edu          Have a great day! :-)